Recipe // Leftover Chicken Roast Soup

There's nothing like roast chicken. Not many of us don't know how to cook a roast chicken and it's nourishing, low fat and fairly cheap if you know how to make the leftovers work for you.
Sandwiches, crispy chicken salads, curry, noodle bowls - all delicious things to do with your leftover chicken. But when you've extracted the chicken from the carcass and you put the carcass out with the rubbish you've missed a trick and lost out on most of the birds nutritional benefits.

Bone marrow contains essential B vitamins that enable us to survive in busy periods and the leftover carcass is covered in a wealth of connectives tissues which help our joints and bones stay strong. When we boil up the bone and eat the resulting liquid we are nourishing our body with a whole host of vitamins and it's nothing you've not eaten before - you'll have eaten chicken stock (in the proper sense of the word - not cubes in foil wrappers) in restaurants and pubs. If you want to know more about bone broth, Hemsley + Hemsley have written an amazing post here.

Inspired by some friends who had put their chicken casserole in a Nutribullet to make soup, I whizzed up my leftovers from a Sunday roast (I may have made extra roasties and veg with this recipe in mind!) with some bone broth into this soup and I've now got a vat of comforting, nutritious chicken soup in the freezer ready for cozy winter meals.

Recipe // Leftover Chicken Roast Soup

Prep time:

10 mins

Cook time:

70 mins

Total time:

1 hour 20 mins

Serves:

6-8

Ingredients

1 leftover chicken carcass

Leftover chicken meat pulled from carcass

2 bay leaves

4 sprigs fresh Thyme

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

Leftover vegetables

Leftover roast potatoes

Leftover roast squash (optional)

Paprika

Salt & pepper

Instructions

Once you have stripped the bird of the meat, place the carcass in a large saucepan and cover with cold water, the bay leaves, apple cider vinegar and Thyme.

Bring to a boil and then turn the heat right down and simmer with a lid on for around an hour

When the time is up turn off the heat and allow the stock to cool slightly, then run the liquid through a sieve into a large heatproof jug or pan and discard the bones left behind

You'll probably have to blend in two batches so place half the leftover veg and meat in the blender with half the stock and blitz until smooth and pale in colour, then transfer to a large saucepan. Repeat with the other half and once all in the saucepan add the paprika and some salt and pepper to taste. If your soup is too thick, add some boiling water from the kettle.

If you didn't have much chicken left you might find your soup is a bit bland so you can add a chicken stock cube (my favourite is Kallo)

Heat gently for around 10-15 minutes and serve. You can allow any left over soup to cool and freeze in jars or glass stoneware for future easy and nutritious meals.